BOOKS: Tiger Mother has company as parenting memoirs go global

Asian mothers demand straight A's. A French mother makes her
children taste eggplant and truffles (and stay out of the marital
bed in the morning), while pygmy fathers soothe fussy babies by
offering a manly nipple.

Obviously, America's popular "What to Expect" books aren't the
final word in baby manuals. But this year, parenting memoirs really
go global.

A year after Amy Chua set off a firestorm with "Battle Hymn of
the Tiger Mother," she's on a paperback tour that ranges from India
to St. Louis.

With the new "Bringing Up Bébé" ---- a "wisdom of French
parenting" book ---- and "How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm" ----
a wisdom of everywhere book ---- there's a sense that many little
bundles of American joy are being exposed to lessons learned around
the world.

"There are lots of ways to be a good parent," Chua said last
week in a telephone interview. "There is also a lot of mutual
judgment."

The judgment part came down like a 50-pound hammer after a Wall
Street Journal excerpt of Chua's book ran last year under the
headline "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." A different Western
publication countered, calling her "The Worst Mom in the
World."

When Chua's eldest daughter arrived at Harvard University last
fall, she watched a skit actually making fun of her family. Sophia
laughed it off, Chua said.

When traditional Chinese parenting works, she says, "you can
build in a lot of resilience."

A St. Louis psychologist, Philip B. Dembo, was among the many
people who spoke out against "Battle Hymn," Chua's memoir of how
she said no to play dates and sleepovers and demanded that her
young daughters spend hours on studies and music.

Dembo's new book, "The Real Purpose of Parenting," is anti-Tiger
Mother, decrying the push for kids to perform: "My concern is that
kids have less of a conscience because they are so worried about
performance."

He encourages rules and family rituals, while also saying that
his Jewish upbringing was too exclusionary. He has exposed his
family to many cultures and says parents need to guide children,
but "we also have to listen to them."

His gentle parental "coaching" is in stark contrast to Chua's
determination not to raise a "soft, entitled child."

Yet telling parents not to hyperfocus on their children is
hardly enough to combat the desperate worry so many American
parents feel.

That anxiety is less in many countries, especially, perhaps, in
ones that have less income disparity than the United States.

Pamela Druckerman doesn't necessarily love France, but in
"Bringing Up Bébé," the expat writer says her Paris home may be
"the perfect foil for the current problems in American
parenting."

It's not just that French parents don't have to worry so much
about paying for health care, preschool or college. (The government
even gives them a monthly cash allotment for having kids.) The
parents are more confident and unified when it comes to raising
their wee ones.

"They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant
service of their children, and that there's no need to feel guilty
about this," Druckerman writes in her book. "While some American
toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training,
French kids are ---- by design ---- toddling around by
themselves."